Saturday, February 7, 2009

A congressional trip to Iraq this weekend was supposed to be a secret.

But the cat's out of the bag now, thanks to a member of the House Intelligence Committee who broke an embargo via Twitter.

A delegation led by House Minority Leader John A. Boehner , R-Ohio, arrived in Iraq earlier today, and because of Rep. Peter Hoekstra , R-Mich., the entire world -- or at least Twitter.com readers -- now know they're there.

"Just landed in Baghdad," messaged Hoekstra, a former chairman of the Intelligence panel and now the ranking member, who is routinely entrusted to keep some of the nation's most closely guarded secrets.

Before the delegation left Washington, they were advised to keep the trip to themselves for security reasons. A few media outlets, including Congressional Quarterly, learned about it, but agreed not to disclose anything until the delegation had left Iraq.

Nobody expected, though, that a lawmaker with such an extensive national security background would be the first to break the silence. And in such a big way.

I have a twitter account, upper right hand corner and throw my posts up to tweet for viewers, but did this congressman understand that twitter is like that lonely goldfish in the bowl? In other words, ALL EYES ON YOU. But this is the jugular:

And yet, Hoekstra, who was told not to talk about this trip, not only shared its existence on Twitter, but "included details about their itinerary in updates posted every few hours on his Twitter page."

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